This invention relates to an apparatus for processing sheet material, in particular bank notes, comprising a processing device having at least one means for generating information on the processing of individual sheets of sheet material, and at least one monitoring device having at least one memory device for storing the information on the processing of individual sheets. Furthermore, the invention relates to a corresponding method for processing sheet material wherein individual sheets of sheet material are processed in a processing device whereby information on the processing of individual sheets is generated and stored in a monitoring device.
Generic apparatuses and methods are used in particular in the testing, sorting and possibly destruction of bank notes. Notes are removed individually from a stack, tested for authenticity and/or fitness according to different criteria, assigned to certain sorting classes in accordance with the result of this testing, and finally supplied to corresponding output devices via a transport system. Damaged or poor-quality bank notes that are unfit for further circulation are passed to a device for demonetizing or destruction.
European patent EP 0 374 481 B1 describes a bank note processing machine in which the destruction of unfit bank notes is monitored by storing e.g. the number, length or quality of destroyed bank notes. In the method for checking the processing of bank notes disclosed in European patent EP 0 453 930 B1, the sums of bank notes deposited in different categories or shredded are furthermore recorded and printed out besides information on date, time, machine and user.
The reliability of monitoring of bank note processing in such machines reaches its limits, however, when disturbances occur in the course of processing, for example due to a crash of the system control. In such cases it might be impossible to reconstruct which notes have been outputted to the individual output devices or actually passed to the destruction device and duly destroyed. To guarantee reliable monitoring of processing, such cases require either a manual check of outputted notes or a repetition of the processing operation. This is impossible for notes already destroyed, however.